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Europe's Treatment of Child Refugees Risks Radicalisation

Highly critical report from Council of Europe says current system is unable to cope with sheer number of children fleeing conflict

Europe’s “abysmal” treatment of refugee children, who have made up about a third of those seeking asylum on the continent over the last two years, will increase the danger of their later radicalisation and drift into criminality, a damning report from the Council of Europe has said.

A system that allows the sexual and physical abuse of children in overcrowded detention centres, where they are often separated from their families, will only condemn Europe to trouble in the future the report warns.

About 30% of asylum seekers arriving in Europe in the last two years were children, according to a report from the Council of Europe’s special representative of the secretary general on migration and refugees, Tomáš Boček. Nearly 70% of these children were fleeing conflict in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The number of unaccompanied children who applied for asylum in the European Union reached 96,465 in 2015 and they accounted for almost a quarter of all asylum applicants under 18 years of age. Read more here